So I know a lot of people have just randomly switched to Discord withoutever having used it before. So, since a lot of you just added me,I figured I'd make a little tutorial so you guys can reference it wheneveryou'd like. Feel free to save this bulletin, repost it for PSA, etc.

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Discord was originally made as a lightweight chat so people could stream games withouthaving to use battery-draining skype. That said, it's super lightweight, but it's also got servers.Servers were used so when you have different people in your gaming group, you can just switchbetween groups on the fly, like a chat.

Each server has its own permissions and invite link, which is what most of us from Tumblr useas a way to RP offsite, so that's what I'm going to be showing you guys today. If you have multiple characters,it's basically the most organized thing you can use. It's going to get a little long-winded, so grab a cocoa.

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So when you first open discord, it probably looks a lot like this. An intimidating discom-bobulation of nonsense. But that's fine, we're going to make sense of it. These are your DMs, think of them like private messages. Typically, this is where youtalk OOC.

On the left, all of those different icons are servers. Some of them are mine, some of themare other people's. Whether you make one or join one, the icon is shown to the left.

This is one of my servers. We'll use Will's as the example, since he has the newest one.My drop page is on the Rules, which means it's the first page seen. However, everythingyou see on the list of hashtags are 'channels', or threads. We'll get to that in a bit.First, let's make a server.Click that little dotted-line circle with the plus in the middle under your friendsicon.

This is pretty self explanatory.

And now you have a plain, ugly server with no idea towards what to do with it.What's to be done about that?Well, first of all, this is an RP channel, so let's get rid of voice chat.Just to be certain there won't be any accidental use of it, we can turn it offin permissions too, but let's start simple.

Right click that nonsense and get it out of here.While we're at it, let's poke around at some settings. Hover over your server iconand hit overview.

That brings up this page.

This is where you could set moderators, additional channels (mainly for voice chat),make custom Emojis, even add bots; but for our simple purposes, let's just click onRoles.

Roles are used for permissions. They'll what makes sure your threads areprivate, locked to a certain group, or public. Let's make one.

When you first click the roles tab, this screen pops up. You'll click the + tomake a new role.

This is where you can change the role name and colour.Note that changing the role name won't change the name of the person in your server,but it will change the colour of their name. To change their name, you have to actuallyset a nickname, which we'll get to later.

Wow, good choice in role name and colour, I like it, but I can't put my finger on why???

Scroll through the settings to the right and decide on what kind of permissions you want thatrole to have. If you want this role to be a moderator or to have specific permissions, such asbeing able to 'pin' or 'delete' other member's messages, you can set that here. Basically, youcan have mods without all mod privileges, admins without all admin privileges, etc. If you're like me and you don't need mods because your friends aren't heathens, just scrolldown to the voice privileges and turn them off.

Awesome, role complete. Now, we have to assign the role to make sure the permissions take effect. Go back to the main page and right click on yourname. Highlight roles.

Click that check box next to the role name.

Amazing, now any channel with permissions allowing that specific role will be able to be seenby me. But, wait, it only changed my name colour. That's kind of annoying. I wanted my nameto change, too.

Right click on your name again. Select 'change nickname'.

Great, this is so great, you're a genius.

None will be the wiser.

Now that we have that settled, let's make a thread.

Click the + button next to 'Text Channels'. Let's name itrules, so we can test out a landing page.

Selecting Private Channel activates the roles. If you don't select Private Channel, everyonecan see what you're writing, which is good for OOC channels or other sharing channels.

Now there's a little lock on the thread, and I'm the only one in it. That's how you know the permissions have been set!But wait, these are rules. We probably want everyone to be able to see them,but maybe not be able to post in them. Since it's the landing page to the server, wecan already confirm they'll be read first. Let's fix that.

Go to the Permissions tab.

For @Everyone to work, you need to delete all of the roles you have set in that channel.Don't delete the actual role! Just delete the Permission for that role in the Permissions tabof the text channel.

That'll select @everyone by default.

Select 'Read Messages' and 'Read Message History' in green.Turn off 'sent messages' and. . Basically everything else. You don't want any permissions except for the ability to read themessages and message history in this channel, in case you changesomething or add to the post. As time goes on, the message willbe 'old' for the person added, so you need message history and readmessages selected to ensure the time posted doesn't matter.

So now, there's no longer a lock on the thread. That means everyone candefinitely see it, but we know because of the permissions that no one canpost in it. Nice.

Since that's finished, let's create the landing page link.

By setting the link to never expire, you can post it in your blog or page, and anyone can join it at any time without you having to confirm it. However,unless you have roles ready or an OOC page for them to talk to you and notifyyou that they're there, you might be against that (just because you won't noticethey've joined until you get a notification from them in the server -- it doesn't notify you when someone's joined).

So, from what we've learned, let's take a look at a thread on Will's server.

There's the text channels, to the left. We're on his landing page at the moment.We can see that Will, Hannibal & Ritchard all have roles in this server.

Let's just confirm the permissions on this one. We can see that it's locked,so only I and whoever else's roles are in the conversation can see it.

So when you click on the settings for this thread. .

. . Even though all three of them have roles, only Will and Hannibalhave roles allowed in this particular thread. That's what ensures onlyCannibae & I can see it. Now, if I wanted to change that --

I'd just right click on his name --

And select another role.

You can select as many roles as you want per person.That's why I could give Caspian and Boo the same role, but so long as the permissions are set in the thread, the name colour will change and it will beassumed that based on the colour, the character is different. (max, u'll join me eventually. peer pressure u into my love)

By this theory, you could set various roles for yourself and be multiple charactersin the same server, but personally, I feel like that would get really cluttered -- it wouldbe easier to just make a new server per each of your characters.

I hope this clears things up for some people! If you have any questions or want to test Discord out on me, feel free to add me @ bloodhound#7835 and I can give youa more personalized rundown.